Long exposure of the setting moon
This was taken the same night this shot was, about an hour earlier. These shots were my first real experience doing long exposure night shots, and the first time I made a real effort to capture the stars.
unranged
by Kevin MacLeod
Looking down on a forested hillside enveloped by fog
This was taken on the road up Mt. Tamalpais. The entire mountain was engulfed in fog all around, and once I finally managed to burst through the clouds, it made for a great opportunity to take a shot. I will probably post some shots from the summit over the next few days.
I also want to start getting in to black and white photography. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything in this field - partly because they seem to be less popular than my colorful landscape stuff - but I don’t want the work I create to be dependant on meaningless viewer metrics. I’ve always felt its important to create the art you want to create, and I’m going to keep doing that.
I’ve probably spent too much time talking about lens sharpness lately. Although I do enjoy digging into the nitty gritty technical details of these lenses on a pixel-per-pixel level - and I’ll continue to do so - I have to admit that it just isn’t particularly important. The fact is, pretty much any lens is going to be pretty sharp on a modern camera. Case in point, this shot, taken with the Nikkor 28mm-80mm 1:3.3-5.6G.
San Francisco cityscape from afar.
This is the second one in a series of shots from this day. The clouds and lighting here were just stunning, and I spent the whole afternoon just driving around the Marin Headlands taking pictures.
I wanted to get an ultrawide coast scene in there, and this spot made for a perfect vantage point over the city and bridge. The light rays coming from behind the bridge were unexpected, but a very welcome surprise!
The Golden Gate Bridge, lit by an incredible sky.
This shot has certainly been done before, including a handful of times by me, so I try to avoid posting it unless I have something new to contribute to the liteny of existing photos. In this case, the sky made it easy.
I spent hours out this day just exploring the area. It’s rare that the sky is such that anywhere you point the camera, you basically can’t help but get a good photo. This day afforded such an opportunity, and I intend on posting several more pictures from the hundreds I shot.
This particular shot is a two-shot panorama taken with the 16-35 f4 VR at 16mm - proving that if there is such a thing as “too wide”, I haven’t found it yet. Postwork was all done manually in Photoshop.
Sunrise though the San Francisco fog
I shot this shot a few minutes later.
This one was assembled as a 3 part RAW panorama, with some manual HDR expansion from alternate exposure. This cheap 50mm lens really is stellar for landscape shooting. Basically zero distortion at infinity, extremely sharp, weighs nothing. For probably about three quarters of my shooting, I could make do with this as my only lens.
Wide Angle landscape featuring the Ritchmond Bridge and Bay Bridge.
I shot this one a couple of months ago, but I’ve been on a bit of a marathon with photography lately, and this is one of many older shots I just never got around to until now.
I shot this one with the D800E, using the Nikon 16-35 VR lens. After using this lens for a while, I can conclude that it really is an amazing lens. Great build quality, 77mm filter compatibility, and an extremely useful zoom range. Although it isn’t nearly as sharp as any of my primes, it IS sharp - as evidenced by the detail in the dirt in this shot. For a wide angle junkie, this is the perfect walkabout lens.
Ultra-wide San Francisco moonrise.
This one was taken the same day as these other two shots of mine, about an hour after the latter.
I wanted to capture both the moonrise and the heavy lighting of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the contrasting shades of blue and red those elements bestowed upon the scene. The 14mm made it easy, but not without distortion - I had to line the shot up very carefully in order to get the architecture to look good.
Still, the lens is amazing, and I can’t complain. With a lens this sharp, you can afford to correct distortion later without ruining micro-details.
